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The US dollar is continuing to correct lower at the beginning of this week and looks likely to end the month at the lows printed in March. The dollar index (DXY) is heavily influenced by the euro component and the appreciation in the euro and weakening of the US dollar has lifted EURUSD back above the 1.2100-level. The EURUSD is now trading within the middle of the Jan’21 to Feb’21 trading range of 1.2000 to 1.2200.
This week’s FOMC meeting on Wednesday is the biggest of the Tier 1 risk events for the US dollar with the rest of the economic calendar likely to support the greenback. The Fed cannot ignore the mounting evidence of a robust economic recovery with better-than-expected economic data flow, and a consensus forecast for GDP growth in Q1 to almost 7%.
Would Chair Powell change stance? It is pretty doubtful, but the market may start to look to the June FOMC as the most likely pivot point ad could start to front-run the Fed.
If all economic trends from the US continue in the current vein, by this summer the Fed will likely have enough evidence to bring up tapering before their current prediction of 2023. Raising rates to 0.75% by the end of 2023 and 1.25% by the end of 2024.
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) also meets this week and announces its policy update tomorrow. This meeting comes after the BoJ decided to tweak their monetary policy framework in March, so we expect an update on how well those changes have gone so far for the Japanese economy.
At the beginning of the year, the BoJ estimated real GDP in 2022 would be 1.8% and that core CPI would be at 0.7%. With the assumption that the Covid-19 situation would be resolved or at least the infection rate curves flattened sufficiently. Unfortunately, the government declared the 3rd State of Emergency in Tokyo and three other key cities that will run from Sunday through to 11th May. These lockdowns will affect the key Golden Week holiday period so we should expect a weakening of Japanese retail sales figures in the coming data releases. These draconian measures are to try and ensure the Olympics can go ahead later in the summer.
The ActivTrader sentiment indicator shows that retail traders on the platform are fairly balanced in their view of the USDJPY. With the bulls pipping the bears by 54% to 46% respectively.
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On the daily chart, the USDJPY is still technically in a yearly bull market, though the last month has seen a 38% retracement from the 31st of March 2021 high and we are now trading in between the 50 and 200 daily exponential moving averages.
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The next level of significant support is the 105.80, which is confluent with the 61.8% fib retracement of the 2021 bull run. However, the 106.80 also has a small level of balance that is the confluence with the 50% retracement level. If the BoJ does not change its stance as predicted by the consensus of market analysts and the US dollar depreciates further, we could tread water around the 107-108 area for a while and definitely until the Japanese authorities are happy they have got on top of the Covid-19 situation. For now, I would be more likely to look for buying opportunities on good US dollar news and we may get to a point in time where the price meets the daily 200 ema on the USDJPY, which coincides with some technical support and a 50% fib, which would likely prove difficult to break through convincingly.
